The Same Boat
by Phoebe Delos
Summary: Two losers cross paths in defeat. Conceitshipping, Mai x Yami no Bakura


**Title: **The Same Boat  
><strong>Author:<strong> Phoebe Delos  
><strong>Fandom: <strong>Yu-Gi-Oh! DM  
><strong>Rating:<strong> **PG** for Dark Imagery & Language.  
><strong>CharactersPairing: **Yami no Bakura & Kujaku Mai, Conceitshipping.  
><strong>Word Count:<strong> 2,573  
><strong>Spoilers: <strong>Focused on Battle City, particularly results of Yami no Marik's duels against Yami no Bakura & Mai.  
><strong>Disclaimer:<strong> I don't own anyone from the Yu-Gi-Oh! Franchise. They're just so fun to play with!**  
>Summary: <strong>Two victims cross paths in defeat.**  
>Notes: <strong>I'm going with manga-verse here. Also, there's some expansion of how the Ring spirit and darkness works. Just ask if anything seems questionable. I hope this works, since I saw other contestants pulled off a similar idea wonderfully!

* * *

><p>How long has she been here?<p>

She can't tell. There's no sense of time. The hourglass is wrong. The creatures tumble out tortuously slow. It gives false hope. She can duck out of their path. Curl against the glass. Kick them across the glass. They keep coming back. Three replace every one. It's not working.

Everything burns. Every nerve fires. Every bite chases away thought of escape, of anything beyond the insects and glass and pain.

Except one.

_She had him!_

He had no spells or traps to stop her. Ra was in her hand. Her combo worked perfectly. The attack points would be high. His life points weren't enough. He would lose. She had done it. She had undermined a God Card. She would win.

She was denied.

A creature climbs up for the six hundredth time or so.

"Get off!"

She knocks it off her neck. Her arm struggles in the swipe. It's been stung too many times. There's venom in their strike. It makes moving hard. And burn.

What will happen when she can't stop them? Keep them from her head? When the vial fills too high to fight back?

What was that darkness? Why did that staff make everything change? What did that monster say to Yuugi? Why did Ra only awaken, then switch sides, at a spell?

How could that condition be allowed?

A dark, wispy cloud sifts around the glass. It comes with a bluster, quiet, deep. It laughs, at something on the other side, at nothing, at her. Mocks her, like the sun above, the waters below, the game she lost. The win robbed of her.

She can't mind it. The whirl is under her, the creatures before her. Dozens kicked on their back, twice as many fighting for the front. Two in need of kicking, one now splattered on glass.

When her toe kicks it, the laugh comes again. It is real. It is cold. It could curl a spine.

It isn't Marik.

She chances a smack to three at once. A stinger scratches her, but gives an opening. She glances down. Nothing but palms and sand and sea. The great taunt of Paradise below Hell. A bite to the ankle. She screams, makes her ankle bleed kicking herself. Or it was the creature's teeth, dislodged. Then it is off, and she is looking down.

Nothing.

"Show yourself!"

Nothing.

Nothing so long she forgets. So long they bubble over. There's no room left. She curls her legs, they're at her toes. She unhooks her disk, endures a bite. Smashes it with the edge. Pierces the sky with eyes. The smoke is gone, but still the laugh.

"Your bugs aren't working!" A bluff, a chuckle of feedback, a need to shuffle. They close in. Try again. "A trick this weak never will!"

"Heh heh, I'm sure it wouldn't..."

Familiar. Not Marik. She turns near around to search. Back exposed. A wave crashes below. Sand sifts in wind. Sun blaring on beach. No one.

"Not for a while at least..."

Not behind. Not below. Up.

Chance looking away, through glass above. Everything is distorted. Everything fragmented. Including the figure, on the very top. Sitting there, lounging back, watching her. Can't see him properly. Can't recognize him. But familiar.

"What are you doing?"

Another laugh. It stings all the more for the true pain it's paired with.

"My apologies, am I interrupting?"

Teeth twisted in the dimensions of glass between. The jeer says it all. She stops looking. Returns to her fight. She accuses, it amuses.

"Another trick?"

"Perhaps."

"What _else_ would you be?"

"_What_ else..."

The tilt of words, the hint of apathy to his own uncertainty. It's just more unnerving. Silence. She slaps with her duel disk, looks up. He's gone.

It seems for good, but there. Between the shrinking spaces between bugs, a cloud. No, a flash of white, then gold, then-

The creatures part like a sea, slinking to the edges. It opens up the view of the beach. Obstructed by the man. Floating on his back, under her. White hair floats like he's on water, not air. She knows him. Yuugi's friend.

But not.

"How did you get here?"

"Don't you have _smaller _things to worry about?"

Doesn't sound like him either. But the bastard's right. They're climbing around the smirking face. Back towards her. She shifts, they follow, she yells.

"What do you want with me?"

"Don't assume so much. I was just passing through."

"You can't pass through here!"

"Oh?" She jumps, near into the bulk of them. The voice was behind, around, in her ear. She looks down. Right where she left him. Still smirking. "What do you know of it?"

She freezes, looking closer. His eyes. They're as crazy as Marik's. Is he not just another trick? Some extension?

Can't think about it. She fell into the center. Bugs, falling, on top of her. Fly back, more there. Everywhere now.

"..not so hard. We're... the same boat...But not for much longer..."

Can't think at all. Can't listen. Can't fight. Can't _not_ fight.

"...only a matter...resurrected again..."

A sting on the neck. Pry one off, three more follow. Try again.

"...when...repay, tenfold..."

Coming too quick. Can't bat off any. No place to throw. Nothing stops them. _Nothing_.

"...if I...thank me...retribu..."

Searing, screaming, voice not helping. A thousand bites. Eaten inside out-

A flash, one of the same eye that marks her tiny torturer. Her true torturer. One that moves through her without contact, scours the creatures from her skin. They fall on their sides, backs, lame legs to the glass, frozen and piled about her, a gold glow keeping them down. The release threatens bile, nerves used to sending the constant message of pain, now flailing at silence.

"There, now that I have your _attention_..."

Eyes up, he's floated up straight, right across from her, that necklace that's something like that staff glowing. Similar to his eyes, cold, empty, irritated. She collapses, but there's no room to fall, so she slides down the glass. It shrieks for her. He sneers for her.

"How did you-?"

"Weren't you listening?" He raises one hand, flicks a finger. A bug flies and hits the glass at her ear, making her jump, then glare at him for the audacity, the bluff. The arrogance leaks off of him like poisoned air. Seeping his words even more than his sport. His bends his finger, the bug flies back. Slams towards him, explodes on contact before his face. No guts or remains, just a puff of shadows.

"This is nothing. Marik's tricks are pointless against me."

Mai blinks through evaporating smoke, trying not to tear up, break contact. To throw back what she got.

"Then why are you here?"

There, his damn smirk broke. But still cool as black ice. He just won't crack, will he? But it's something.

"The rules of the shadow game are different."

What? She pulls from the glass, slides closer to consider. It doesn't explain this power or psychotic manner, but if he played Marik too, lost too-

"You got trapped here too?"

"Not quite..." He echoes her thoughts. And it's obvious not _quite_. Where's his cage? Where's his torture? Why is he loose, while she's in here? Maybe it just wouldn't hold him?

His eyes, the Marik-mad ones, cut through glass easily enough. "So you fought Marik yourself, did you?" Why is he suddenly serious? Does he not know? No, of course not. Yuugi's friend was out cold during her duel... And wasn't he like _this_ when he fought Yuugi? "What happened?"

She longs to spit in his face, but there's still that glass. And she can't help but eye that hand, still up. Could he throw her with it too?

"What does that matter? I lost."

"I don't care anymore about that than if those creatures devour you whole." The gravel of his apathy runs rough over her skin. "Now tell me what he did with Ra."

His face gives no hint of where he's going with this. The bugs are still about her, some brushing her. She can't tell if they're dead.

"Why? So you can release them when I'm finished?"

The damn smirk is back.

"Would you rather I let them go now?"

And there goes that theory.

So she gives him the cliff notes. And when that doesn't satisfy, she summarizes what Marik did. And when _that_ doesn't work, she gives a play-by-play of each turn, her hate for the man holding out his hand in a threat of retracting his help the entire time. But the more bite she puts into her words, the more he seems interested in her, in what she says. Especially the part about stealing Ra with her Grave Arm trick.

But in the end, he looks away in dismissal. She near jumps when he drops his hand and the Ring stops glowing, but nothing moves except him and her, her relaxing back, him crossing his arms.

"So, you didn't even get as far as I did."

-that's it. Even with every inch of skin still screaming, she considers this as much torture as those bugs. She falls forward on her hands to glare at him before he can open his mouth and pester her with more questions.

"What, you managed to Ra into your own hand and actually summon it? You didn't have that man sweep out from under you and laugh as he tore you apart?"

Those strange strange eyes go wide, but any hope of a satisfying tick in his armor goes out the window as he laughs, loud, annoying, aggravating, and infinitely eerie all at once.

But just as she's ready to throw her smooth comeback out the window for a proper yelling, he floats _through_ the glass to get right in her face, sending her flying back against the glass by her own reaction, rather than a flick of the wrist.

"I have a proposition for you."

She can't back up any farther, can't even manage a retort as he floats before her, legs going through the bottom of the clear cage like it's not there as he creeps forward, not moving a muscle.

"How about I let you out of here...Wake you up... And you give me a little hand?"

Talk about _deal with the devil_. But, seeing the bugs over his shoulder, his freedom...

Frown. "You can do that?"

Smirk. "You doubt me?"

Suspicion. "You need me?"

Scoff. "I _need_ what that boy has."

Which boy does he mean? Marik? And who cares? She's not interested in his goals. She just wants him out of her face. But he's busy making a demonstration of a grand gesture at his necklace, like it would mean something. "And I need a go-between to get me to him."

"You managed without before, didn't you?" Apparently not, given the narrowing gaze, again with no feeling behind it. But all the same, "What's different now?"

"I lost my usual ride." ...what does _that_ mean? Nothing makes sense, least of all the leer he's focusing on her. "And _you_ might be _useful_."

She doesn't like the way he says that, even though she can't pin down _how_ that comment is distorted. However he means it, she doesn't like it.

"How so?"

"We can fight him again, together..."

The point that two duelists can't fight one nearly leaves her tongue, until she remembers how she got here. How Marik tried to drive her mad with his tricks of blood and shocks and decapitation. How he managed that trick with Egyptian writing to steal what she rightfully won.

And remembering that, she bleeds out the true kink in his plan, worse than even the sheer _insanity_ of working with him.

"I cannot use that card."

He slides back, judges, then smirks.

"Not on your own, you can't."

She's not sure whether to be insulted or complimented or just creeped out.

"Why should I work with you?"

"Would you rather I leave you as you were? Let you get eaten-" A bug twitches at her knee, and while she doesn't jolt again, the message comes through loud and clear. "While Marik runs about _upstairs_?"

The thought that he should mean _downstairs_ floats through, but it's near buried under worries of the picture he paints. Of Marik, fighting other people, throwing them in cages like her, apparently like _him_. Of her friends down there somewhere, looking to save her at their own expense, while she's up here, suffering, doing nothing. The princess in the tower, waiting to be saved.

"Don't you want to face him again... Don't you want to get him back for toying with you, have a chance at the last laugh... Or are you going to sit here, and wait for someone else to fight for you..."

She's not certain if she's just easy to read, or if this _man_ can read more than he should, but either way, each suggestion is a well aimed shot against the glass of her heart. Her pride.

She can't do it. She can't turn away this chance. She can't let Jounouchi or Yuugi or anyone else stand up for her when this devil is offering her a hand to stand up for herself.

She tears her gaze from the sight below. His eyes are finally active, shining. Alive with already knowing, he's had his way.

"You win."

A smirk breaks, and he throws back his head as the insects, the beach, everything else slips away in black.

"Ha ha ha ha-!"

The glass shatters.

"Attention all duelists! We are about to arrive at our final destination! Be ready to land in one hour!"

Mai stops, looking up at the intercom screen in the hospital room. Behind her Shizuka is prone, collapsed against the bed. She doesn't remember her falling asleep. Doesn't remember waking up herself, or putting on her coat and disk and deck, or standing up. But there's no sense of disorientation. Like the blanks in her memory are filled, just by somebody else.

Like the voice talking to her.

_Do you hear that? H-heh heh, it's time for round two!_

_Round three_, she corrects, passing into the hall. Passing the doors of the first two semi-finalists without stopping. Who would be the fourth? Likely Kaiba, but she never saw the challenger. And if this thing knows, he's not sharing.

It doesn't matter. Not yet.

_Yuugi... Jounouchi... I will repay your friendship, but I will do it in my own way._

Another bluster of laughter tickled her spine, but she ignores the amusement of the creature using her. She knows her heart is being exploited, but he can't get what he wants without granting her her retribution, her chance to regain her pride. He can laugh at her, pry through her mind, stab into her back with what feels like five thick needles. He can amuse himself however he likes, as long as he evens the field for her when the time comes.

For now, they need each other.


End file.
